NOAA: Tarballs found on beaches from Galveston to Florida (Disturbing-not all from BP!)

The most disturbing part of the story is that they're not all from the latest oil rig leak. Where are the others from?

NOAA Web Update May 15, 2010 DEEPWATER HORIZON Incident

Situation: Saturday 15 May – NOAA continues to provide scientific support including: modeling the trajectory and location of the oil, conducting shoreline oil assessment surveys, conducting oil chemistry analyses, and evaluating open water and shoreline remediation techniques.

Undersea dispersant application resumed this morning and BP is doing continuous testing. If tests reveal something we are concerned about, the dispersant application will be stopped.
Skimming and in-situ burning was planned but postponed until the weather is more moderate. Aerial dispersant application did take place.

Tarballs were reported west of Galveston, Texas to the Florida panhandle. Testing already underway has shown some tarballs to be from this spill and others not.

As of today, 1.6 million feet of boom have been deployed, and all the ports remain open.
Over 11,000 people were working on the response today.

http://www.incidentnews.gov/attachments/8220/527210/DeepH2Oweb_15May.pdf

channel in Port Arthur Texas the states second largest oil spill occurred when an 807 ft singapore flagged tanker vessel the Eagle Otome loaded with crude oil collided with a towing vessel the Dixie Vengence. An estimated 420,000 gallons of oil spilled into the channel..an immediate stradegy to contain the danger was put in place and reportedly minimal damage to wildlife occurred though a few dead birds had been discovered, those covered in oil were cleaned and apparently survived...I live here and heard nothing...until now when I searched.

Living in Texas, I have been long privy to the knowledge regarding the tar balls that have been washing into our beaches.

There are spills virtually every week in the gulf. This latest one, just happens to be stupidly enormous.

We live our fate.

come from ships cleaning the inside of their hulls illegally.

from a nearby platform. They've been pretty accurate so far.

They found that because they were looking so intently at photos of BP leak. I wonder how many of the rigs out there have chronic leaks that we never hear hear about?

http://blog.skytruth.org/2010/05/bp-gulf-oil-spill-slick-getting-bigger.htmlAnd we think we've discovered an unrelated leak from a nearby platform that was installed back in 1984. The MMS ID# for this platform is 23051 (look it up here). A small, dark slick appears next to this platform on radar satellite images from April 26, May 8, and May 13 as well as this May 14 image.

It's not a major leak but it may indicate a chronic problem. Somebody should check that out to make sure it doesn't get any worse.